Graphic novels aren’t just novels that have been illustrated; at their best, the text, artwork, lettering, and design work together to tell a story that transcends its individual pieces. Here are some recent examples worth seeking out.
In Tongues: Volume 1 (Pantheon, March 11), a retelling of the Greek myth of Prometheus, Anders Nilsen makes full use of his oversized pages. On most of them, individual panels are put together in intriguing geometrical shapes, looking like Magna-Tiles shifting into ever-changing configurations, while some drawings take up entire pages or even two-page spreads. A striking sequence has the Prisoner’s organs spreading red tendrils around the panels as he dreams of pulling a young girl from the earth; when he wakes up, his body is nearly swallowed up by green plants that are drawn to look almost like circuit boards. Every day, an eagle eats his liver and sometimes also plays chess with him. Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus stops by, and they debate the fate of humankind. “The whole narrative has a decidedly otherworldly sense to it,” says our starred review, “and it’s utterly beguiling: throw in a magic cube to complicate the storyline, and while it may not make much sense, it doesn’t really have to if the reader suspends disbelief long enough to listen to an eagle trying to make sense of an iPhone. Superb graphic art meets an exceedingly odd tale, and to wonderful ends.”
Yudori has drawn her sexually charged debut novel, Raging Clouds (Fantagraphics, May 27), entirely in black and white, evoking the 16th-century Dutch setting—and the erotic lives of her female characters—with elegant simplicity. The book opens on a full-page drawing of an unhappy-looking woman with the text, framed as if it were a painting, saying “Amélie was a brilliant girl.” Her main interest is in studying the mechanics of flight. The first time Amélie’s husband, Hans, shows up, he’s chewing on a chicken leg and the words MUNCHMUNCHMUNCH are repeated in three rows all the way across the page. When he comes home with an enslaved Asian woman to serve as his mistress, “Sahara” and Amélie first resent and then interest each other. Our starred review says, “Yudori’s tale is captivating…with her illustrations elegantly depicting everything from complex emotions to the erotic contours of the female form. The plot and characters are engagingly complex, and the pacing deliciously brisk. A rich, engrossing tale that manages to be both concise and expansive.”
Mattie Lubchansky’s Simplicity (Pantheon, July 29) is set in 2081 and opens on a drawing of an exhibition labeled “What was…THE HUDSON RIVER?” Lucius Pasternak, a young trans academic, is commissioned by the Museum of the Former State of New York to study the hippie community that’s been living in the upstate town of Simplicity since the 1970s. The residents don’t trust him at first, but as he works beside them, the sense of freedom they exhibit “seduce[s] him into becoming a participant,” according to our review. “When Lucius arrives in Simplicity, the colors on the page transition from the gray and radioactive neon of the city to yellow sun and green plant life.…Intense, imaginative visuals pair well with the futuristic fight between idealism and oppression.”
Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.
